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Joel McHale stopped by The Howard Stern Show to promote Community’s new season

Chevy was a tumultuous presence on the set--there was no intervening: “When I’d try he’d just want to fight me. Like, physically fight me.” It’s still hard for Joel to understand why Chevy was such a pill: “I wanted to be like, ‘America loves you , dude. You’ve won.’”

Chevy often said he was above sitcom work: “He would say, ‘I’m a movie guy,’ and I’d be like, ‘Alright, movie guy...” Howard asked if Chevy was insane, but Joel shrugged--the hours are hard on everyone. But still: “It’s way better than being a citizen in Syria.” He also confirmed that rumors of Chevy’s on-set use of the n-word were true: “When he said it, I was like, ‘We are now at Defcon 1.’”

THE TIME JOEL PUNCHED CHEVY CHASE

All of this made it difficult to hold back when they were filming a scene in which Chevy, pads in hand, trained Joel to be a boxer. As Chevy needled and needled and needled Joel to hit harder and not “like a pussy,” Joel resisted the temptation--for a while--and finally unloaded, when the scene was in the can, with a hard left: “I separated his shoulder.”

WHAT GOES INTO THE SOUP

Asked about his work on ‘The Soup,’ Joel said most of their targets don’t mind: “Without exception, every single reality star I’ve met has said, ‘Thank you for having me on. When can I come on again?’” The only person to threaten them? Tyra Banks: “We love her in that she gave us so much material. In that sense, we thanked her every week.” Bruce Jenner, allegedly, is also “not my biggest fan.”

Howard wondered if Joel had a favorite reality TV target, and Joel nodded, citing Whitney Houston’s work on ‘Being Bobby Brown’: “One of the biggest pop singers of all time was talking about her husband digging piles of shit out of her butt.” The worst? Britney Spears and Kevin Federline’s boring, self-filmed ‘Chaotic.’ A former staffer would disagree: “For a year, we had a girl who watched every hour of the ‘Today’ show. She was like, ‘Guys? I’m going to jump off this deck.’”